Yesterday Ace posted a link to the full Lemming recruiting rankings from 1990 to 2004. Just perusing the list is pretty interesting, since accessible recruiting data on a national scale otherwise only goes back as far as the Rivals and Scout databases. Since nobody likes to make their information easy to get at, it'll take some time for this all to be processed.

But for a first stab I did find something I can pull relatively easily from both Lemming's sheets and modern data: where players come from, and where they went. Lemming only had data on where recruits were from going back to 1999. Since it was easiest to grab a Top 400 from 247, I took theirs too, but they run out of rankings before 2008 so there's a gap. It won't matter for this. I broke the nation into regions that quasi-match the traditional conference footprints:

And here's the % of high school recruits that each contributed to Lemming's (on the left) and 247's (on the right) lists:

Who's been telling you that demographics are responsible for the SEC's rise? It's not there. The Big Ten's traditional footprint was providing 15% of the nation's talent in 1999 and the SEC was around 35%; today it's almost the exact same.

That episode where Mr. Burns had to go work for Smithers. I'm sure there is one.

The Big Ten Championship Game and bowl selection gives us an opportunity to zoom out a little.

Who's on the up, how do next year's divisions stack up against each other for the short and long term, and what's the long term outlook for the Big Ten on a national scale (and do you care?)

Mathlete: With Michigan State's title and several preceding years of quality, they have moved into that 1B tier. Ohio State is the only team right now I would consider in the top tier. They have both the recruiting and the on field to be clearly at the top.

I wonder what Coach Dantonio thinks about "1B" status. He probably has a measured, mature response that acknowledges his schedule was kind of easy and his recruiting is lacking. [Fuller]

Joining the Spartans in 1B I would put Wisconsin. Behind them you have the good but definitely behind the top teams group. Unfortunately right now that includes Michigan along with Nebraska, Iowa. In the third group you have the chaos teams. Northwestern, Indiana, Minnesota (how did that happen), Penn State and probably Maryland are teams that had a pretty decent year last year despite another rash of injuries. That leaves Purdue, Illinois and Rutgers at the bottom tier.

So if you look at the divisions you have the East with 2 first tiers and 1 second tier team. The West would have 1 first tier and 2 second tier teams. The caveat is that the East's second tier team, Michigan, has been recruiting like a first tier and will finally have a large amount of acclaimed talent in the upper classes. If Michigan can move up to tier one, then the East is considerably more challenging.

On a national scale it's hard to see the Big Ten join the top as a group. The two paths up are recruiting and coaching and right now there is a pretty big gap between the Big Ten and the best in both. If Michigan can start playing like it's recruiting, and 1-2 teams of Michigan St/Wisconsin/Nebraska/Iowa can play at the top level each year, then that should help the profile of the conference. Three+ really good teams means you move out of ACC territory and get to where a conference champ would be in a position for 2 high quality wins. Ultimately, that's the blueprint for the Big Ten at the top as a conference, 3 high quality teams, 2 high quality wins. Without a foundational shift, the full depth isn't going to match up. But if the top 3 can, the conversation should die down.

"I hope we're all up on the latest changes to the NCAA rule book." [Fuller]

Wait, substitution. Wait. Wait, what?

Yo Brian,

So when the bearded lady rushed into the center ring to launch the football out of the cannon through the flaming uprights at the end of the Evanston Circus, Michigan obviously made a substitution. Northwestern did not make a substitution, but they, according to the Rules, could have. If they did, it seems like that would have taken more time before the official gave the ready for play, and potentially wasted enough time to run the clock out. In this parallel universe game which is crazier than the actual circus which unfolded, does Michigan get to attempt the field goal? How are the rules applied in that situation (which thankfully did not happen)?

Late in the first half Team A is out of timeouts. A pass play on third down ends inbounds at the B-25 short of the line to gain with the game clock showing 0:10. Facing fourth down and three, Team A immediately hurries its field goal team onto the field. RULING: Team B should reasonably expect that Team A will attempt a field goal in this situationand should have its field-goal defense unit ready. The umpire will not stand over the ball, as there should be no issue of the defense being uncertain about the next play.

Thanks to Maize and Blue Wahoo. I will self-immolate now like a Northwestern fan observing his team playing football.

Late in the first half Team A is out of timeouts. A pass play on third down ends inbounds at the B-25 short of the line to gain with the game clock showing 0:30. Facing fourth down and three, Team A gives no indication as to its next play until the game clock reads 0:10. They then rush their field goal unit onto the field, and Team B then hurries to respond.

RULING: The umpire moves to the ball to prevent the snap until Team B has had a reasonable opportunity to get its field-goal defense unit onto the field. The umpire will step away when he judges that the defense has had enough time. If the game clock reads 0:00 before the ball is snapped after the umpire steps away, the half is over.

That is in blue along with various other new rules (like "minimum time for spiking the ball") this year, so it must have just been added. If Fitz tried to substitute, the rulebook says that the refs have to let him and the clock would then run out.

This is of course terrible since it prevents the sort of exciting thing that happened against Northwestern and replaces it with the clock running out because the defense can't get aligned in time and should be immediately stricken in the name of fun… except maybe it doesn't exist?

Game ref Bill LeMonnier:

“When a team is coming out and it’s the last play of the game and they substitute with their field-goal team, the defense is not given the opportunity,” referee Bill LeMonnier said. “Usually there’s match-up time on substitutions. When it’s the field-goal attempt like that on the last play of the half, then there’s no match-up given.”

This is in direct contradiction of the rulebook. So… yeah. I don't know. The only thing that may reconcile these two points of view is the rulebook stating that the team getting the FG unit out there spent 20 seconds doing nothing, whereas Michigan was clearly going GO GO GO as soon as Gallon was tackled.

Spiritually, if you can't get your FG block team on the field in that situation and the other team can get the play off, screw your field goal block team. Fire drills forever.

As we enter the last season of the Big Ten as a natural twelve-team conference (er…) it is only natural that we begin to question exactly who's a "real" Big Ten of the Big Ten, and who ought be "the other four." With media days under way across the Midwest and 2014 recruiting now in full swing, the Big Ten coaches have begun the annual rite of playing up their school as the epitome of this great conference. To separate the contenders from the pretenders, in the great tradition of teen magazines, I have created a sort of test. Answer these 20 questions and find out if your school is the Real Bee-One-Gee:

1. After you joined the conference people commonly started calling it…

a) the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives b) the Western Conference c) the Big [actual number of schools in the conference] d) the Big11Ten e) That league that's been arguing with Time Warner and running all those ads to call your cable company lately.

2. When it comes to finding a head coach the ideal candidate would be a man who…

a) was born into our program and will be content to stay here making $50k/year until his dying day. b) can most plausibly be foisted on the fans without breaking the bank. c) is the most Kirk Ferentz. d) best embodies the traditions and ideals that contrast most sharply with the guy we just fired. e) has already proven he can win at the highest collegiate levels, preferably coming off his obligatory two-year NFL excursion.

3. Our school is best known for growing ______.

a) leaders and legends in the weight room and in the community. b) a new strain of pesticide-resistant turf c) offensive linemen d) pro-style quarterbacks e) disillusionment in the NCAA, its rules, and its enforcement competency.

4. With 6 minutes left in the game you have the ball up a touchdown on your opponent's 37-yard-line, and it's 4th down and 7 to go. What do you do?

a) Run up the middle because that kills the most clock. b) Punt and play defense. c) Fake FG then pooch punt and to bury 'em on the 1. d) Send in your kicker with thoughts of beautiful co-eds. e) Send all your receivers on deep routes and tell your quarterback it's time to poop some magic.

5. You have just been informed that one of your players was ticketed for a DUI. Whom do you speak to first? (UPDATED)

a) The offending student. b) The parents of the offending student. c) The parole officer of the offending student. d) The guy from the local police station who fixes these things. e) The shady agent dude who sold you the student.

6. A fan of a rival school is Tweeting about how much your school sucks. What is your first/most typical reaction?

a) Tweeting? Is that one of those computer whatsit things? Sorry I don't have an iBay account. b) Reference historical record against each other going back to that one period when your school was a national power. c) Calmly explain that you take great pride in the tradition and history of your great school and the profound respect you have for this, the greatest rivalry in college sports in your opinion. d) Demonstrate your unparalleled passion for your school: "YOUR/UR JUST JELLOUS!" e) Wait, back up. We're rivals?

a) a piece of schlock we stole from the Paul Bunyan Museum that one road trip. b) something we picked up at a farmers' fair 100 years ago, and had it bronzed when it started to smell funky (slab of bacon, whole pig, whole turtle). c) something our "rival" left on the field (megaphone, shillelagh, spittoon, wooden bucket, water/Gatorade jug, house keys) when they skedaddled after that one time we beat/tied them. d) an item we dug up at a Civil War site and have been fighting over since (tomahawk, top-hat, ship's bell, etc.) e) something Jim Delany made up to explain why we have a protected game with someone 5 states away.

9. What is Notre Dame to you?

a) A great and important rivalry that dates back to the days of _____. b) Another great university and football program with great tradition. c) Mackerel-snappin' papists; after that Guy Fawkes incident I don't trust 'em. Heck, didya year they think "Bill Shakespeare" is a quarterback? d) Any of several magnificent High Gothic cathedrals you will see on our world-class study abroad program to France. e) A small, overrated private school for lazy rich kids in a train-stop rust belt town in Indiana, notable for operating since 1924 under the delusion that it's in Lower Manhattan.

10. The following word/phrase shall never depart your lips without the reverence of a thousand angels with very long trumpets:

I got into an argument with a Michigan State fan—yes, right there is the problem—about our respective kickers last year. In true Michigan-Michigan State fashion the Spartan was making points using selective data (Dan Conroy has a better leg!) and the Michigan fan spent way too much time building data and constructing charts to demonstrate a nuanced and supportable conclusion (Dan Conroy has a better leg but Gibbons was money inside the 40).

I pulled kicking data from NCAA's game summaries and managed to get data points on 241 field goal attempts by Big Ten kickers last season. I also plugged each kicker's season into a Sabre.com formula for rating the position created by a guy named Jeff Yutzler, but his formula is WAY too kind in my opinion (as in there were 13 B1G kickers who scored in the A- range or above). For ease I've just ignored blocked FGAs since there's little the kicker can do about those. Table? Table.

Kicker

Team

18-30

31-40

41-50

50+

FG%

Yutzler%

Jeff Budzien

NW

7/7

7/7

5/5

0/1

95%

99.8%

Matt Wile

Mich

-

-

1/1

1/2

67%

99.6%

Brendan Gibbons

Mich

7/7

7/7

1/3

1/1

89%

97.7%

Nick Immekus

Ill

2/2

-

2/3

-

80%

97.1%

Paul Griggs

Pur

-

3/3

1/2

0/1

67%

96.9%

Brett Maher

Neb

6/7

8/9

3/6

3/5

74%

95.7%

Mike Meyer

Iowa

11/11

2/4

4/6

-

81%

95.5%

Dan Conroy

MSU

8/8

5/9

10/15

-

72%

94.8%

Mitch Ewald

Ind

9/10

1/2

5/6

0/1

79%

94.1%

Drew Basil

OSU

4/4

2/4

1/2

1/1

73%

93.2%

Taylor Zalewski

Ill

2/3

-

1/3

1/1

57%

92.7%

Jordan Wettstein

Minn

4/5

6/8

4/6

0/3

64%

91.7%

Kyle French

Wis

3/3

5/7

2/5

-

67%

91.5%

Sam Ficken

PSU

8/9

6/8

0/2

-

74%

86.3%

Sam McCartney

Pur

2/3

3/4

-

-

71%

76.7%

Steve Flaherty

NW

-

1/1

-

-

100%

64.4%

Jack Russell

Wis

-

0/1

0/1

-

0%

51.1%

Big Ten Total

x

73/79

56/74

40/66

7/16

74.89%

94.3%

Michigan: home of high yutz values

This says Michigan's kicking is was really darn good, though low sample size applies for Wile of course. Here's a chart of Michigan and Michigan State field goal attempts last year. X axis and size represent distance, Y axis is the order in which the kicks were attempted. Click bigginses:

Gibbons was perfect inside 42 yards, though in comparison to the Big Ten he took a lot of kicks in that sweet 25-35 yard range. Wile was obviously the long guy.

Conroy was deployed a lot, and here you see he seemed to have a big hole from 35-45 yards. Inside that he's great, outside of that he's great; for some reason the dude missed a ton of FGs from medium range. Sort him by distance and it reads 13 goods, whiff, whiff, whiff, whiff, whiff, whiff, good, good, whiff, good, whiff, good, good, good, good, whiff, good, good, good. Kickers: weird.

With the new bowl lineup I thought I'd delve into the conference's history with the things this week. Chart of sane bowl names is here.

The beginning

We whomped Stanford in 1901 so bad they canceled bowl games for a decade.

Rose or Bust.

For a time there was only the Rose Bowl. Then others began to pop up and the Big Ten wouldn't let teams go (Ohio State snuck over to Pasadena after the 1920 season but that was it). Then they said only one team may take a bid from the Rose Bowl.

It's been nearly 40 years and yet any Michigan fan over 50 still shakes with anger at it: In 1973 Michigan and Ohio State met in one of the more epic battles in that epic ten-year war. After Michigan missed three field goals in the 4th quarter the game—and thus the Big Ten title race—ended in a tie. In the process the Wolverines' starting quarterback Denny Franklin was busted up. Woody Hayes, never a particularly classy individual, made an uninformed remark to the media that he's sorry Franklin wouldn't be able to play in the bowl game. In part because they believed Michigan would be without Denny, the conference's athletic directors voted to send Ohio State to the Rose Bowl.

The following year Michigan did make their game-winning field goal, but the officials missed it and there was no replay, and Ohio State again went to Pasadena. Since the Big Ten wouldn't let its teams attend any other bowl, both times a more deserving Michigan had to stay home. Overall Franklin and the Wolverines managed to go three years (1972-'74) without a bowl game despite going 30-2-1 over that span.

The whole concept was as mind-blowingly ridiculous as it seems, and the following year the conference finally got rid of the rule that had become outdated due to...

Bowl Expansion

The conference deigned to allow its teams to go to bowls again only after WWII, and then it was "you can only go to the Rose Bowl if they invite you." Once the Big Ten released its members it sparked a new round of bowl expansion (click to inbigmatate):

Note the Y axis is "Bowl Teams" not games—divide by two to get # of games. Some oddities: Michigan wasn't in the Big Ten from 1907 to 1916, not that it made any difference. Having one yellow dot in the bowl picture looks ridiculous. Michigan State went to an Orange Bowl before joining the conference. Penn State and Nebraska obviously went to plenty of bowls before they joined. Ohio State turned down its Rose Bowl bids in 1960 and '61 because of academics(!); Minnesota went in their stead.

Michigan's Placement

Since the bowl field expanded, the Big Ten's tie-ins have gone through a series of confusing shifts, order only recently having been brought into the process. Owing to its TV draw and instant draw the bowls have typically taken Michigan almost as soon as they're allowed to. As a result when you look at the conference's bowl history you can see Michigan tends to go early even in its rough years.

This is ordered by selection (starting from the left). Historically Michigan has been selected higher than its standing in the conference, the more so the lower down we get. For example in 1984 Michigan received an at-large Holiday Bowl bid—effectively the conference's third selector after the Rose and then the Cotton Peach took Purdue as an at-large—despite finishing behind Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin, and tied with Michigan State, whom we lost to that year. Since then there have been progressively more stringent so-Michigan-State-won't-cry rules placed by the conference on the bowls for which teams they can select. Before it was they have to be within 1 or 2 losses of each other. Under the new system there's a tier:

The New Lineup and the Golden Vagina:

1. Teams selected by the playoff committee go to the Golden Vagina Playoff.

2. If the champion is still around they go to the Rose Bowl (vs Pac-12 or at-large), or the Orange Bowl (vs SEC or at-large) in years the Rose are the playoff hosts (2014 and every three years after).

3. BCS bowls can extend an at-large bid.

4. Citrus Bowl (SEC), Outback Bowl (SEC) and Holiday Bowl (Pac-12). Those bowls will unofficially switch off who gets first pick but really the conference will be sitting there negotiating who gets which school with the goal of rewarding better teams and changing things up a bit. Said Delany:

"Someone will obviously select first, but they may or may not get the team they want because that team may have been in that region two years in a row. We're trying to make sure there’s freshness. It's hard when a team goes to say Florida five times in six years to get them really excited."

5. Gator or Music City (SEC), San Francisco (Pac-12), and Pinstripe (ACC). The first two switch off with that bid.

The only way the Big Ten champ will play the Pac 12 champ is if both are seeded as such in the playoff, or both miss the playoff. I am guessing it will not happen very often. The tier system is a rather eloquent method of handling the problem of Michigan State's blubbering over bowls falling over themselves to avoid them. See? You're on the same tier. Everyone on the same tier is the same.

Still Broken

The new system does have its problems:

Not all of the payouts on each tier are equivalent right now—that seems like it can be negotiated.

In a scenario where Michigan State beats Michigan in the regular season, thus winning the tiebreaker to get into the Big Ten Championship Game, and MSU subsequently loses that game and is no longer BCS eligible because they're ranked too low now, and Michigan is still ranked high enough for a BCS bid and gets one, Michigan State will still cry.